Tag: travelblog

The day had arrived for me to depart Corpus Christi, Texas and embark on my road trip/move back to Florida. But before I could leave the middle of the country, I needed to spend some time exploring. Texas is a mammoth of a state. It’s larger than a number of countries. To break up the drive I decided to travel halfway through the state to Waco, Texas.

Waco has become a bit famous because of the home makeover show Fixer Upper. TV personalities/house flippers (I guess now they’re really business moguls) Chip and Joanna Gaines have established quite the establishment in Waco that I really wanted to see. Between this and a Mammoth National Monument I found, I wasn’t sure what else Waco had to offer, but there was only one way to find out. Go there and see!

The Silos

I arrived in Waco right around lunchtime. As I drove towards the Silos the sidewalks were packed with people all heading to the same destination. It was Mother’s Day weekend here in the states, so I think that played a role on the busyness.

The Silos were quite a sight to be seen. I’ve seen silos before, but they’re still quite impressive close up. Of course upon arrival you must take photos of these galant giants and appreciate everything laid out before you. There’s a bakery, food trucks, shop, large area for yard games, tables for eating, areas for taking photos. A lot of thought and planning has been put in to develop a place for community.

The line for the bakery literally wrapped around the building and down the street, so I took that as a sign to stick to my diet.

The shop has tons of home decor items and also merchandise such as shirts, hats, books, and more for the Fixer/Upper fan.

The food trucks offered a variety of choices from pizza, tacos, sweet tea, crepes, juices, Mac and cheese, the list goes on and on and is making my stomach grumble just writing about it. All that uppity talk in my mind about sticking to my diet didn’t last long and I splurged for some very delicious mac and cheese.

So after a long morning of driving, I explored the Silos for about an hour, ate lunch, bought a souvenir for my sister, and headed out to meet some mammoths.

2. Mammoth National Monument

I loved this! It may be the teacher in me, but I loved learning about the mammoths that roamed Texas once upon a time. And also being able to see actual fossils and the archaeological dig site still in place where they were found. It cost me $4 and it was worth every cent and more. The tour guide was very humorous and informed. 4/5 dentists would recommend.

3. Downtown Waco

I love some street art. Waco unexpectedly has some!

It makes me want to go back to find more!

4. Shopping, Restaurants, and Views

I went to Waco with the expectation of only finding the Silos and the Mammoth Monument. It has so much more to offer. I could’ve easily spent another day there exploring. There were many more shops and restaurants within walking distance downtown and there’s even a trolley you can take around. I wish I had been more prepared! I suppose I’ll have to venture back one day to see and do more!

5. Lake Whitney

Alas, it was time to set up camp and rest my head. A short drive from Waco is Lake Whitney. This Lake has multiple camping options that range from paid to free! Sign me up for the free! It’s first come, first serve so I didn’t want to arrive too late and have to pay for a campsite. The first nook I looked down was all taken, but I lucked out at the next section and scored a spot right across from a boat dock, portapotty, and on the lake.

This was a great start to my road trip and I couldn’t wait to see what Oklahoma would hold for me next.

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I love a good road trip. I don’t mind endless hours in a car. Stopped still traffic. Detours. Give me it all if it means getting to adventure somewhere new, eat all the food, and scratch off places to visit on my list.

For the last decade that I’ve been traveling, I’ve taken 3 multi-state roadtrips. The first was of ten states mostly on the east coast and the south. I wrote a bit about it when I first started my blog which you can read about here, Travels with Carlie-Planning a Road Trip. My next multi-state road trip was Fall 2017 of the New England states which I have not written about quite yet. Stay tuned for details on that adventure! New England speaks to my soul unlike any other place I’ve been to yet.

Now for road trip numero tres. Allow me to tell you how this trip was planned, then rescheduled, then rescheduled again, then almost didn’t happen.

If you are familiar with me, then you know I work in education. Well I planned this fabulous road trip of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas for my husband and I to take over spring break. I spent a great deal of time perusing pinterest, tripadvisor, and roadtrippers planning out a well balanced itinerary of city experiences, nature adventures, and food- food is always a priority to my plans. I had everything set and then the Navy happened. My husband got orders to relocate EXACTLY when I had our roadtrip planned. It’s as if they knew it would but a damper on my day. Since we would be moving him, but then I would go back to Texas, I simply rescheduled the roadtrip to do solo at the end of the school year. With this change to the plan, I also did some reorganizing of the trip since I would no longer need to return to Texas at the end and would simply keep driving to Florida instead. So I started counting down the days to June 1. My last day of work. Fortunately enough, I wouldn’t have to wait that long. My school was able to find a replacement for me to finish out the last two weeks of school, which meant rescheduling the trip again, but being able to see my cats, I mean husband, even sooner than originally planned!

So the trip was on! Allow me to introduce you to the itinerary:

As the date of departure approached, I must honestly say I considered canceling the trip altogether and just driving straight to Florida to be reunited. I really missed my cats. But I told myself I had to take this opportunity to explore multiple states I may never have the convenience of being relatively close to again. So I loaded up my Rav4 and embarked on what was a truly memorable solo experience.

To be continued…..

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I have about forty days left of living in Texas now. When we first received the news that we would be moving to Florida, but I made the decision to stay in Texas a couple extra months to complete the school year, I knew I wanted to make the most of the time I had left. I have not been impressed with living in Corpus Christi that much, but I knew there had to be so much I was missing in such a giant state like Texas. Also, so many people LOVE Texas, so I knew I needed to explore more to see what all the hype was about.

I came up with the following list so I could have multiple “Texas” experiences, while also being budget-conscious.

Since making this list, I’ve completed two items. You can read about Enchanted Rock by clicking on the link above.

The second event I have checked off my list is the Texas Rodeo. I was invited by a good friend to attend the Tejas Rodeo located in Bulverde, Texas. Bulverde is just north of San Antonio, and it was definitely worth the drive from Corpus for this very Texas experience.

From start to finish, the rodeo was a great time! It was $10 for each adult, children were free. They also offered food and drinks for purchase. Seating was metal bleachers surrounding a large arena where all the fun took place.

We saw men and women compete in bullriding, roping, mutton bustin’, and barrel racing. I wasn’t a fan of the roping part of the show, but I LOVED the mutton bustin’. Are you familiar with this fantastic show? They tie small children to sheep as they attempt to cling on to sheep. This is to mimic bullriding for kids. You have not lived until you’ve seen a 4-7 year old on the back of sheep trying not to fall off. It really made my night.

I definitely think I would have warmed up to Texas sooner if I had this experience a year ago. I wish Corpus had a weekly rodeo like Bulverde! I’m also pleased my cowboy boots finally got some use. Stay tuned for future posts as I complete my Texas Bucketlist!

I felt a little gross and dirty from not showering for a few days. Thank goodness for dry shampoo and baby wipes.

I felt disappointed this would be my last day of my adventure and I would have to return to work on Monday.

All of these feelings energized me for the day ahead. I hit the road by 7:45am to drive the 1.25 hours to my destination. I arrived 30 minutes after their opening time of 8:30 to this sight: About 50 cars lined up on the side of the road trying to enter the park. I underestimated the number of people who would be interested in hiking and this fantastic natural location so early in the morning. Watching every car briefly stop to talk to the park rangers lined up at the entrance only to either continue on down the road or u-turn and head in the opposite direction, I finally got to the front of the line. They already reached their max capacity for the morning, but I was offered a voucher that guaranteed admittance at 1pm when they reopened.

With a little over 3 hours to kill, I fortunately had many options to occupy my time before I would be able to return to the park. I decided to travel the 17 miles to Fredericksburg, TX. What a fantastic town! This destination is known for its German immigrant culture mixed with Texas pride. There are tons of shops, restaurants, wineries and entertainment to keep you occupied for days! The town was bursting with activity and tourists participating in egg hunts, shopping and sight seeing since it was Easter weekend.

I’m not really much for large crowds or spending money so I did some quick research and found a nearby wildflower farm that was free to visit. Sign me up! Wildseed Farms was perfect! You can’t help but admire all the Texas Bluebonnets lining the roads as you travel through Texas, and to have a location with acres of them growing in on place was absolutely gorgeous. They have a shop, winery, an event venue, cafe, and of course the fields. If you’re in the area, you really need to make it a priority to stop.

As the time drew closer to 1pm, it was time to head back to Enchanted Rock.

It was worth the wait.

My intentions were to hike to the top of the dome and then complete a loop around the base of the mountain as well. You can see the trail map here. The climb to the top was tough, but doable. My shoes gripped the granite easily and even a simple tennis shoe would probably do the trick. The views were breathtaking. Nature truly is amazing.

My feet and blisters were not happy though. I laid down and smiled through the pain.

After basking in the sun at the top, I finally decided to make my descent, skipping the longer hike I had planned and headed home.

I don’t think I could have had a better time on this trip. Everything exceeded my expectations. I know there were a few people concerned for my safety, but not once did I feel unsafe. Cold? Yes. But never, unsafe. I really need to get that sleeping bag for next time.

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My first night in the car fell somewhere between enjoyable and a learning experience. In case you didn’t catch on in my first post, it was a little chilly in the car that night. Despite the cold, I woke up to a beautiful sunrise!

I had intentions of departing by 6:30 am, but I ended up leaving later than that since it wasn’t even sunrise yet, and I didn’t really feel like packing up in the dark. When I did finally roll out of “bed”, I was able to pack up my supplies in under 15 minutes, including eating my breakfast of pre-made hard boiled eggs and set out to my next location, Colorado Bend State Park.

Today’s itinerary included hiking Gorman Falls and Tie Slide Trail, and a cave adventure tour I booked through their website here. And here is a map of the state park, and all their trails.

I headed straight for the park headquarters upon arrival at the state park. I had my fingers and toes crossed to reserve a campsite for the night and I was super lucky that there was one site left! With my accomodations taken care of, I was behind schedule and didn’t have time to hike to Gorman Falls before my cave adventure, but I did have time to complete the Tie Slide Trail. This trail has lots of trees for cover from the sun and leads to a beautiful overlook of the Colorado River.

Following this hike, I snacked on some grapes and headed back to the headquarters to meet my tour guide for the cave adventure. I’ve been in a cave before. I’ve toured the Natural Bridge Caverns outside San Antonio, TX and I’ve toured Diamond Caverns in Kentucky. Both of these tours were spent on your two feet the whole time and the most strenuous part might be going up and down stairs. The cave adventure I was about to participate in boasted a majority of crawling and a more raw experience than I had any history with. And an adventure it was!! The guide provided helmets and knee pads, which came in handy again and again as we spent the entire tour on our hands and knees and I bumped my head numerous times as I crawled around this primitive cave. It was AMAZING! I’m still not sure how I fit down this tiny hole and then climbed up through a different, but equally tiny hole.

I cannot recommend this experience enough! It was well worth the $25 price tag, if anything, it was a bargain!

Our tour left from a different part of the park than I was expecting, so instead of going back to the trailhead for Gorman Falls, I decided to just hike from where I was at Cedar Chopper Loop. This added many, many miles to the amount of hiking I had originally planned, but I was feeling ambitious. I took Cedar Chopper Loop to Dogleg Canyon Trail and peeped this awesome canyon.

Dogleg Canyon Trail to River Trail and got to see a closed to the public cave entrance while using chains to traverse this tricky spot:

River Trail to Gorman Falls which got very slippery at the end as you descend down to the base of the waterfall.

Definitely worth the struggle though.

I reached Gorman Falls and according to my Fitbit I traveled 10 miles by foot so far. My feet were preaching every step of that data. I still had to hike back to my car. Who’s idea was it to not drive to the trailhead? Mine. It was mine. No one to blame but myself.

Old Gorman Road to Cedar Chopper Loop got me back to my car the fastest. Once I was back in the RAV4 I headed to my campsite for the night where I quickly got my bed together, made my dinner and then did some stretching next to a curious armadillo.

Even with the cold that night, I slept very fitfully out of exhaustion. But I found a new love in hiking.

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My first adventure into solo camping was quite the experience. When I brought up the idea with friends and family, the majority of responses included:

That’s not safe!

Aren’t you scared?

Do you want to die?

I did get one:

I’m so excited for you, and jealous!

Now either I’m too naive or stupid to be scared of solo travel, or there’s nothing to be scared about. I guess time will be the judge of that conundrum!

You can read how I prepared for my trip here, but I’m so excited to share where I went in this post!

I started my trip right after work Thursday evening. As soon as I had my little chitlins(students) on the bus and I was free of responsibility, I filled my cooler of ice from our break room, jumped in my Toyota RAV4 and hit the highway. 4.5 hours later I reached my first destination where I would camp for the night. An amazing little (free!) campsite, Cedar Point Recreation Area, was the perfect spot to sleep for the night. This location is first come, first serve, so I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find a spot in one of their 9 campsites, but when I arrived at 8pm with the sun setting and deer frolicking in the fields on either side of the drive, only 3 of the 9 sites were claimed. I backed into site number 9, directly on Lake Buchanan, and started to set up camp as the camp host pulled up to write down my tag number and let me know about the rules of the campsites. This elderly gentleman was so kind and reminded me of my grandfather as he let me know not to try to drive around the speed bumps when I leave and if I planned on drinking to make sure I do it from a koozie. Reasonable requests in my eyes. And can you be mad about the view?

I honestly cannot rave enough about this lucky find for my first night camping. They are grossly undercharging for their product, but don’t tell them that.

Some lessons learned from my first night:

The temperature drops significantly at night in the spring in Texas. It was 90 during the day, 40 when I woke up.

Leaving the windows down is a mistake if the temp is going to drop 50 degrees.

One quilt is not enough to provide warmth if the temp is going to drop 50 degrees.

Why didn’t you check the weather and temperatures you would encounter, knowing you would be camping?

Add to shopping list: sleeping bag for cold temperatures.

This may have been my first time camping in my car, but it wasn’t my first time camping. Apparently I was so excited for adventure I forgot about common sense things like: it’s cold at night.

Any questions on my setup or experience?

More on day two coming soon!

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So the weather has been incredibly fabulous for the month of March. April-February are horrific, but March is really amazing. This weekend was so nice, I met a friend to explore the Oso Bay Wetlands Nature Preserve.

My first 11 months living in Corpus Christi, Texas, I was super lucky to live just a few blocks from the Oso Bay Wetlands Nature Preserve. I came across this gem fairly early into our residency, but it took me probably 10 months before I truly explored all this place had to offer.

When you first arrive in Corpus Christi, you are more than likely going to drive in on South Padre Island Drive (SPID). SPID is lined with pretty much every chain restaurant, retail store, and fast food restaurant you’ve ever heard of. It is also home to two malls, and multiple car dealerships. You would not expect to find some of the views and wildlife which can be found at the Oso Bay Wetlands Nature Preserve, which is not far off from SPID.

When I first started visiting this place I would walk a straight line down the trail from the entrance by the road, down to a really great overlook point on the Oso Bay. I did this for months because I thought it was the only finished trail, but I was so wrong! As I would find out many, many months later, there are multiple trails with various unique and worthy scenic points that I highly recommend. There is also a nature center open during the week, and a playground for the tiny humans.

I can’t help but feel like this experience can be a metaphor for life. We can go through life with blinders on, only seeing the path directly ahead of us. And while there may be a worthy destination within view, life can take you in many other directions also with equally fantastic, if not superior, experiences. We only need the courage and willingness to venture off the main path so we can be pleasantly surprised.

There’s also the possibility to meet a rattlesnake or two along the way, which did happen to me on my last visit, and scared the bejesus out of me. The snake was actually really chill and just slithered away into the brush like I was boring and it was time for a nap though.

Do you have any great trails near you?

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I have been camping probably hundreds of times in my life. I would go so far as to call myself a seasoned camper. Despite all of these trips and excursions into the woods and mountains, apparently it wasn’t enough times to prevent some very rookie mistakes this last weekend.

My husband proposed the idea on Friday. Randomly, he recommended we go camping on the beach for one night on Saturday. It sounded like a great idea to me! I couldn’t wait to wake up to the sound of the Gulf of Mexico, play with our kite, and bury my feet in the sand. The one perk of living in South Texas may be that you can comfortably go to the beach in February.

Saturday came around, we took care of some household chores, loaded up the truck, and set out for the beach and our overnight camping expedition. The last time we went camping was over New Years, so we were looking forward to disconnecting, even if it was only for the night.

Well, we hit our first road block early into the trip. We first headed to Mustang Island State Park where I read it was free to camp on the beach. A quick 20 minute drive and we were pulling up to the entrance, only to find it was closed. They are still doing clean up after Hurricane Harvey that hit the coast in August 2017. Well we quickly reassessed our situation and headed in the opposite direction to the Padre Island National Seashore. This is a National Park, and luckily since he is active duty military we get an annual pass into national parks for free-I love free. Civilians can purchase an annual pass for $70. About 30 minutes in the opposite direction and we were in the park, our spot scouted on the beach, and we were setting up camp for the night.

Cue snag number 2. I started cooking dinner. Grilled chicken and a salad were on the menu. I immediately realized I didn’t have any aluminum foil to cover the chicken in the pan. Not a big deal, but it would’ve helped the chicken to cook a bit faster, especially since it was incredibly windy. Ten minutes into cooking and I noticed the flame was out on our stove. Fabulous. I thought it was due to the wind, but it was due to the butane fuel can being empty. No biggie, we have a spare in our kitchen gear. Not a full can though. It was about 3/4 empty. So five minutes into trying to cook with that can, and we were completely out of fuel. As a last ditch effort to salvage the protein for our dinner, we put the pan on the campfire. It turns out, cooking on the beach over a campfire, on a windy night, and no cover for your pan, will only lead to your food being completely covered in an extraordinary amount of sand. Making it inedible.

Snag number 3. We have a rooftop tent. This completely genius invention is a tent that can be mounted on- you guessed it- your roof! It is a GAMECHANGER! It’s probably a million times more comfortable than a ground tent, and takes about 30 seconds to set up.

Check it out:

Typically we keep our sleeping bags and pillows in the tent. Everything folds up so nicely and conveniently! Well, as I mentioned before, we went camping over New Years. Since our trip was about four nights long, our linens were due for a wash. In our haste, we remembered to get the sleeping bags from the linen closet, but not the pillows. Balling up a thin hoodie to serve as a replacement pillow is not ideal.

Overall this trip, while it could’ve been better, was still a great time. We learned that we definitely need to not get complacent with our camping prep and just assume we have everything we need in our pre-packed gear. We also learned that the trip is about being together, even in unideal circumstances. And we learned that sandy chicken is gross. I don’t care. I still got to wake up to the sounds of the waves from the Gulf of Mexico crashing onto the beach, just feet from where I was sleeping.

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Today is the 100th day of school. I work in an elementary school, and the 100th day is kind of a big deal. Kids and teachers dress up… students complete themed activites based on the day… there may or may not be a parade for the students to show off their 100 day apparel, arts and crafts. It’s so cute! It also got me thinking, why do they get all the fun? Why not use this opportunity to take a 100-themed idea and put my favorite spin on it? Travel. So, what are the 100 places I’d like to travel before I’m 100?

In no particular order:

28 Destinations in the United States

24 Destinations in Europe

20 Destinations in Asia

19 Destinations in America

9 Destinations in Africa, Antarctica, and Oceana

Whew! There are definitley a lot of places on my list. Just a few more than my typical 5. I literally cannot wait to start checking some of these off in the very near future. In fact, I’m getting ready to take a road trip in March that will take me through 4 states in the USA that I’ve never been to.

Are any of these places on your list? I thought it would be hard to come up with 100, but it was actually hard to narrow it down to ONLY 100!

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